A compact disc player, instead of operating by having a needle in contact with an upwardly facing groove in a rotating record, operates by a laser-reading device. A laser beam is sent up toward downwardly facing digital data on a reflective surface of a rotating disc and moves outwardly radially at a speed corresponding with the radially outward progress of the digital data, and the laser beam is reflected back down through a laser lens that sends the laser signal to a photopickup assembly and through circuitry and mechanisms to produce high-quality sound or digital data. The discs are called "compact discs" primarily because the commercial "compact discs" for music reproduction are each only approximately 12 cm in diameter instead of the nearly 30 cm diameter of a 12" LP record.
A compact-disc playing unit includes a main shaft, which is rotated by a motor and has a support flange or turntable near its upper end. On the turntable the compact disc rests. The disc rotates above a stationary flat member which has a radially extending slot thereacross. In the radial slot, a pickup assembly, including a lens, is provided and it gradually moves radially along the slot from an inner circumference toward the outer circumference, as the main shaft rotates the disc and the turntable. Since there is no needle or stylus, the instrument is relatively free from extraneous sounds.
Some compact disc players have a drawer or tray on which the compact disc is placed and which carries the disc into the player proper, where it is clamped to the turntable. Other compact-disc players require the manual placing of the disc on the turntable.
In either event, when the disc rotates on the horizontal plane, dust is apt to settle on the horizontal lens of the pickup, since the lens faces upwardly. This collection of dust distorts and may occlude the laser irradiation and affects the reproduced data. Since the laser lens rests in the radially inner part of the slot when the disc is not rotating or is removed, the lens cannot normally be cleaned from above. Therefore, ordinarily a normally stationary plate located over the slot would need to be removed in order to clean the lens.
In fact in the drawer or tray type of device, the entire slot is inside a housing that entirely denies access to the laser lens, except by disassembly of the entire player ---- a thing ordinarily impossible to the user.
An object of this invention is to provide a simple cleaning apparatus for cleaning the laser lens of compact-disc players and other devices that use the C-D (compact-disc) format.
Another object of the invention is to provide a cleaning apparatus that is readily used to clean the lens of any compact disc player or other device using the C-D format.